Dancing with Dump Trucks

“Man to man, Yago, I’ve gotta tell you. Your Mom is driving me nuts with this baby name issue. If it is a girl, no problem. But we can’t agree on anything for a boy.”

“So, what are the options?”

“You know your Mom. She wants to call him Moon Blossom, or Petal Water or some damn hippy, nature thing. But I would prefer a nice traditional Spanish name. I have given her lots of options: José, José Antonio, José Miguel, José Luis,..”

“Hose A, Hose B, Hose C… Dad, as a truck lover, I’m with you. The fire station equipment list is a great source for boy names. But we must respect Mom’s cultural heritage as well. Have you considered a traditional aboriginal name? Remember He who runs with wolves? Mom would dig the nature vibe, but perhaps with a more traditional, masculine twist. I was thinking…”

“He who drives yellow dump truck, or

Big wheels, small hard hat, or for something more modern,

Top down, go fast, get chicks.”

………………………….

Dear readers. Please save us from a Canadian-hippy, traditional-Spanish, aboriginal-toddler compromise which would result in the name, “He who does yoga while excavating with José”. Otherwise I will be changing my handle to “She who pulls out hair and drinks heavily.” Do you have any Spanish-English hippy-traditional boy names to suggest?

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28 comments

Hi Rea,
I met a proud Spanish dad recently who’d called their boy Hugo. I just thought that was sooo cute! I can see your dilemma and I will get my thinking cap on. I also have a friend who called her boy Jupiter, which I like too! Good luck with the mission, when are you due? xx

I know a little guy who’s name is Kyan pronounced Ki an…it came from I believe a waiter they had in Cuba 🙂 So there is the spanish/latin part…I’ll keep thinking..boys names are always difficult..especially the darn cross culture thing.
I wanted to name our youngest Cameron..until I realized the Portuguese would pronounce it Camerao..which is..shrimp

Great link! Almost all of the names I have considered are on it. Although you are 1) not married, 2) not pregnant, I just have to throw in my new favorite girls name. Noemi. No-Eh- Me, such a nice twist on the old Naomi. You know, just in case you are looking for baby names.

Funny, we were also looking for a boy’s name we both liked. And failed to find consensus. Fortunately we had a girl and there was no discussion. I like Rafael, Ramon, Manuel (a no no no for hubby who thinks Faulty Towers when he hears the name). Not very hippy, sorry. A friend named her daughter Autumn, I quite like that. Oton~o maybe? Or a location? There are some lovely Scottish Island names, mostly girls names, but Arran, Corrin, Rowan, Logan, Lewis, Harris are for boys.

I like Xavier (and the short Xavi) and Ernesto as well, but find that Santiago is a pretty good compromise between a Spanish name and an “alternative” one (it makes me think about Coelho, and spirituality…things like these). Anyway, check carefully out the meaning of the name you choose: it could be a bit disapponting to discover that a nice name has a silly meaning – and if you must bear it for all your life it could be a tragedy indeed 😉 good luck for your search!

WE had the exact same problem, if it was i girl we had it down by week 10 of pregnanacy. But it turned out we were having a son. it came down to 8 days before his birth and then we just decided…
I am mexican and speak english, spanish (and spanglish when needed) and my husband is a Canadian who speaks English and French.
We were looking for a name that would seamlessly translate trough the three languages and we came up with Lukas. We though it was fabulous (he’s 20 months now).
Good luck on your search

I’m also Canadian, married to a Valencian, living in Barcelona, have two daughters and have been through the agony of naming twice. We chose names that work in all three of our daughters’ languages–Nora and Emma, of which only Nora is pronounced three different ways–after I’d done pitching Margaret and Charlotte (lovely names, my wife said, but no-one here can pronounce them) and my wife had done here best to talk me into the likes of Caterina. The boy’s name we’d chosen (an easy choice, but then we had girls) was Samuel.

I’ve thought of my daughters as English-speaking Canadians all their lives. Of course, they are more than that–they go to a Catalan school, speak three languages to their mother, have monolingual cousins in La Rioja–but it’s helped, at home, that their names are easy for me to say. I don’t have to choose between anglicising the sound of a Catalan or Spanish name and switching phonetic registers every day I speak to them.

Thanks for that John! So, I’m not crazy to think it’s important. I don’t want to set the kids up for a lifetime of explaining away their name. It drives me nuts that noone can pronounce mine. We really thought that Yago would be so easy, containing the few vowel sounds that are the same in both English and Castellano. I never would have guessed that my Canadian family all initially called him “Yeh-go”, as in San Diego. I blame it on Dora the Explorer.